


It starts like this

by 221BFakerStreet



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Everybody is Bad at Feelings, F/M, Gen, I made up a backstory for the Deputy, John Seed is BAD at Feelings, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rook (Far Cry 5) - Freeform, The Deputy is Bad at Feelings, Violence, and it's all very unhealthy, and they're all going to pay for it later, everybody gets one, i am the Oprah of concerning and upsetting emotional attachments, rook, the John/Deputy stuff is implied, the resistance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 16:34:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14429694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221BFakerStreet/pseuds/221BFakerStreet
Summary: The rook can move as many places as it wishes, but only in the Cardinal directions.This doesn’t make much sense moving as you do among the bush and scrub of the Montana wilderness. Hope County is a large thing, a beast of its own in the dark. In the light, too, it's still hard to tell where you're going sometimes. Where you've been. But that's what people call you, and after a while you can't remember a time when it wasn’t your name.





	1. everybody gets a compass

**Author's Note:**

> I FINISHED FAR CRY 5 AND NOW I'M SAD THAT IT'S OVER SO I'M INFLICTING MY RAMBLINGS ON EVERYONE.
> 
> Anyway. I had a lot of feelings about the characters in this game.

It starts like this:

You are sitting in the living room, watching your Papa clean his guns. He is methodical, and you watch the path his fingers take across every small piece, every single step. You want to be like him, because your Papa is a good man. He is a good man, although he is often tired, often too busy. Your mom tells you that he is a good man, and you do not yet have the sense or the distance to see how easy such lies come to her. You will, someday, but today you watch him carefully from your perch on the edge of the couch cushion. Today you wonder who he is, this good man, your Papa. You wonder where he learned his trade, those calloused fingers holding onto secrets you cannot grasp.

And when he beckons you over, you are too thrilled that he has taken note of you to wonder, also, at what he is teaching you.

The gun comes apart in your hands, and your nimble fingers discover it like new country. It shines, even the pieces held under the sway of your Papa’s rugged hand.

When you are finished, he runs his hand over your hair a bit sloppily, mussing it. He tells you that you've done so well, and you are happy.

This is how it begins.


	2. the rook

1.

The rook can move as many places as it wishes, but only in the Cardinal directions.

This doesn’t make much sense moving as you do among the bush and scrub of the Montana wilderness. Hope County is a large thing, a beast of its own in the dark. In the light, too, it's still hard to tell where you're going sometimes. Where you've _been_. But that's what people call you, and after a while you can't remember a time when it wasn’t your name. It becomes you in the strangest way, like an albatross hanging heavy around your neck in the shape of your mother's star of David. You think about the Torah, and the Shabbat, and the Russian lullabies she sang to you in the dark when your Papa was asleep. You sing them to yourself at night sometimes, and you remember all the words but you still don't know what they _mean_.

It makes more sense when you’re staring into the eyes of Joseph Seed, which is like looking into an abyss. You've spent your time dealing with drunk and disorderlies, domestic disputes, the occasional Zip Kupka style nutbar (a strange comfort, your first meeting with Zip)- you were always the one they had deal with those a little off-kilter; said you had a _way_ with them. But none of them were Joseph Seed. Only a few of them ever had that blank unwavering gaze, barely blinking, and they were usually behind a layer of security glass.

The sky is overcast, although the sun is shining through it and there is a cloud curling around it like the fist of an angry god. John Seed paces in front of you like a little boy who can't sit still.

Joseph stands like a statue in the background, and everything is surrounded by fireflies, little showers of blinking lights that disappear when you look at them for too long. Suddenly it's not overcast anymore- the sun has set in the blink of an eye, and you are floating inside of a fresh water womb, choking on the liquid filling your lungs. And you wonder if you could be _good_ , if you'll be _saved_.

And then you are pulled sputtering from the lapping waves, and in front of you is John Seed, staring through you as though you are a ghost that is haunting him. When he lunges, Joseph’s hand stays him, steady as a rock as it grips his brother’s shoulder. His words float through the air like butterflies, you can feel the wind from their wings brushing against your cheeks.

You understand better when John leads you back to the van, when he tells you that you will confess to him, and you will be born anew. There are only four directions in which you can travel, but Joseph Seed is true north.


	3. his mark is upon you

2.

John Seed is _not_ a modest man.

This itself would be his sin, were his sins not plentiful enough already. They are written on his flesh still, some of them, others torn from his body as though they are pages ripped from a journal; one word entries that, together, spell out the tragedy of his life (at least half by his own making).

But there are no good men, you think, and this is fine. Sheriff Whitehorse approaches something which could be considered good, a better father to you than your own had ever been, and _yet_.

John Seed is not a _good_ man, either.

You think, briefly, that he might’ve had the capacity to be. Once, when he was young, just young enough to understand how wrongness _felt_ , but not old enough to _do_ anything about it.

He wants you to say “yes”. _Emphatically_ , say it like you _mean_ it. Like it could save your life if you let it. And maybe it won't save _you_ , but it _might_ save Deputy Hudson, at least for the moment. And so you tell him what he wants to hear. You say “yes”.

He brandishes his tattoo machine like it's an actual gun, and for all intents and purposes that's what it _is_. He presses close, so close you can see the green flecks in those bright blue, fevered eyes. You are taken, for just a moment, with how captivating his face is. That's how they get people, you know. John is the bait, and he's smart enough to be able to reel you in, too. Just say yes to John, and your life will be so much _better_.

The pain of the tattoo is a familiar sting, and though his engraving is neither artful nor careful it seems like it takes forever. Your skin is burning by the time he pulls back to examine his handiwork.

 _Wrath_ is how he has named you, and now he has branded you with it. His mark is upon you, as true and unsettling as though it were his own name written there in your flesh. You will see it later, once you've escaped, and it will look every bit as angry and jagged as the definition of the word itself.


	4. sins of the father

3.

John Seed leans over you, peering down at you, and something awful and hot coils in your gut like a snake in the grass.

John wants you to _tell_ him things, so you can be _absolved_. He's told _you_ things, not that you'd ever asked, really, but fair's fair.

“Let's talk about the sins of the _father_ ,” you say, and smile as his heated gaze sweeps over your face. He makes as if to lunge, and you can see the strain as he manages to hold back. Too much _wrath_ , you think. But you don't say it. Yet.

“Are they my sins, too?” You ask, meaning to throw him off his game, but are surprised to find that you would like it if he had an answer. If his word, his mark, could relieve you of this particular burden.

He pauses, tilts his head, _examines_ you. You shiver under his gaze. John Seed is impetuous, sure, but he is also a creature of emotion, manipulation; he hides inside peoples’ heads, pulls them screaming into the dark so that Joseph might bless them with holy light. For a moment, you feel as though you will be no different.

“Perhaps,” he says, edging closer to sit in the chair in front of you, some parody of a therapist earnestly listening to his client’s woes, “if you tell me of his sins, I can address your question.”

And this seems, on its surface, to be a reasonable request. You deeply regret offering him this inroad to your personal tragedy all in the interest of trying to pull a fast one and get him riled up. Whitehorse had told you _every_ time in training: “You keep takin' the easy way, it's gonna get you in _real_ trouble someday, Rook”.

And now you are staring down the barrel of a loaded gun in the shape of John Seed, and you wish more than anything that you could exist outside of this moment, in a future where you and Whitehorse are laughing about old war stories where you fucked up and told the Peggies your secrets in the form of a five word question.

You think that when- _if-_ he sees your scars, he will understand. Like rings on a tree they spell the age of the journey which has brought you here and they are older, some of them, than you would like to admit. You've fought more battles than this war of attrition into which you've been pressganged.

The stalemate continues as you worry your bottom lip with your teeth, a habit that has yet to leave you even after all these years. Papa taught you how to handle a gun, but nobody ever taught you how to handle a _feeling_.

He leans in close enough for you to feel his breath on your face. “We’ll talk about your daddy issues _tomorrow_ , Deputy.”

He pushes his own chair back when he stands, metal screeching across concrete, and leaves the room with a flourish before you can quite catch your breath. You are left trembling in the wake of it, whether in anger or something _else_ , you’re not really sure.

It will be days, yet, before you admit it, even to yourself. And by then, you will be long gone down the Henbane River.


	5. flinch

4.

Faith has told you of your path, the one before you, the one behind. _Two roads diverged in a yellow wood_. Robert Frost. Your Papa's favorite poem, but he never did take that road, so you’re not sure what he saw in it. Dreaming, maybe. Of a different life, down another way, a long time ago.

Your path diverged somewhere between the blades of a helicopter and the quiet refrain of Amazing Grace, whispered into your ear like a call to arms. You’re still not sure which path you'll take, if you've already chosen regardless. Jacob had a lot to say about choice, about free will. Lot to say for a man so sure of the path laid out for him that he threw himself upon it like a sword.

Every time you hear the refrain of that song, you want to flinch but you can't even do _that_ much. He has broken you in a fundamental way, has done far worse than John ever could.

And speaking of John, when he finds you bleeding and alone in an old barn by the air field, you think about asking him to kill you. End it all, here and now. They would find your body, perhaps, but definitely your gray matter. It would stay in the splintering support beams, stray thoughts about the taste of apples or the feel of blood slipping down the hilt of a knife.

He will tell you later that you were delirious when he found you, a little lost lamb. But you will remember the smell of his sweat against your nose as you breathed him in, and the shushing calm of his voice settling over you like a balm. You will remember the song, the way the words flowed from your lips and nothing- _nothing_ happened, because at the end of the day, you have to really _want_ it.

When that epiphany happens, you will want to die all over again. But you won't.


	6. it’s as easy as breathing

5.

When you murder Eli, it is a simple thing, and you hate it all the more because of that fact. Jacob looks at you like he _knows_. And he probably does, you think, because the world is different for people like the two of you. You look into his eyes and you see your own reflection- in shards and pieces, but you both know that sometimes it’s as easy as breathing. Sometimes it’s a reflex, it’s _survival_.

He has taken the wounded animal inside and given it something approaching purpose. And it _infuriates_ you, because the purpose is not your own, not even _close_ to your own. You’ve never minded getting your hands a little dirty, sure, but there were _rules_. And Jacob has broken them all, because he doesn’t play fair. You still aren’t sure whether you’re weak or strong according to his ever-shifting goal posts, but it doesn’t change what you’ve decided.

When you had killed Faith, it was practically an act of mercy. She had all but begged for you to end it, the parade line of blonde-haired women that all made their own pilgrimage, one after another, to a watery grave. Like Ophelia, drifting in the current, surrounded by her flowers.

Killing Jacob is like killing yourself. And it makes you grimace, makes you laugh madly afterward until you cough up phlegm and spit and gruel and sob like a child. You haven’t cried in _years_. Nothing ever felt right about it; it was the voice of your Papa, maybe, somber and flat as he told you there was nothing to cry about. But there’s a _lot_ to cry about, you decide, an _awful_ lot.

“Two down, one to go,” Dutch says through the crackle of radio static. What do you do when the angel on your shoulder is also the devil?

You’re not a biblical scholar, but you live in Christian country, so you know enough. You know what is necessary for a life here, and for the assignment. A woman asked for the head of John the Baptist, who became a saint in his martyrdom. You will not ask for John Seed’s head on a platter, but you fear that you might be the one to deliver it.


	7. true north

6.

John Seed is not a _good_ man. He is not a _modest_ man.

John Seed holds your mother’s Star of David in his hand like it’s a precious artifact. And he looks at you with eyes so blue and bright but full of clouds that they might as well be your sky.

John Seed wants to know your _name_.

He’s been calling you “Deputy”, “Dep”, and “Rook” all this time, but there’s something in him- he _uncovers_ things, those secrets we bury deep, deep down inside. Unearths them, brings them into sunlight so that they shrivel and die.

For the longest time you thought that Joseph Seed was true north. And that has been true for a great many people. But John is the one who has named you, and with that name you have been born again. Joseph would call it blasphemy, and John might even say the same. But you are a creature born of sin, and you will guard it jealously in the cage of your ribs.

His big calloused hand comes down quick, knuckles scraping against your teeth as he backhands you. “I _said_ ,” he pants, steadying himself on his feet, “you will _tell_ me your _name_.” You can taste blood in your mouth, like pennies and salt, and you’re not sure whether it’s yours or his, or if that even matters- if any of it did, in the end. And this _is_ the end, you know. Of you, of who you’ve strived so hard to _be_. You are certain that the Resistance will continue on with new heroes, ones that your story will help to create; and you are certain, also, that Joseph will rain hellfire down upon them where he can and that he will break a hundred more before he’s through. Because that is the nature of the beast. There are a million different voices just screaming into the void, pleading for anchors.

So you look at John peering down at you now, anger buzzing beneath bruised skin and gritted teeth. And you smile, like a wolf bearing its fangs.

And you tell him: “Wrath. My name is Wrath.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so. I hope that was good? I hope it was obvious, anyway. I know my writing can be a little cryptic sometimes, LOL.
> 
> Feel free to comment, I always try to reply, and I love reading them. <3


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